


In Bloom

by Leafling



Series: It's been five years and I'm still thirsty for Kylo Ren. [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Awkward Romance, Crush at First Sight, F/M, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Professor Ben Solo, Professor Kylo Ren, Reader can be M or F or NB, Reader-Insert, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:41:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29024415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leafling/pseuds/Leafling
Summary: You’re the cashier at a small flower shop. He’s the most handsome passerby you’ve ever seen. And every day, at lunch rush, he walks by.One day, he comes in.
Relationships: Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Reader
Series: It's been five years and I'm still thirsty for Kylo Ren. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2129262
Kudos: 4





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't notice the new collection I made, I've got a lot of Kylo/Ben content I'm gonna be uploading. :) Stay tuned!

You’ve been cashiering at Kanata’s Florals for about a year. 

It’s light work, part-time hours at most. It’s one of those jobs that can get away with never offering benefits and barely paying minimum wage. For someone in the pursuit of higher education, it’s enough. The little pay keeps the pantry's shelfs lined with something other than fifty-cent packs of instant noodles, so it’s worth it to don the gritty beige apron at seven-am, every other day, and sweep the floor until the broom bristle's are caked with dirt. 

Your job title says “ _cashier_ ,” but you’re really just the cleaning lady. Dust this, wash that, take out the trash— _sweep, sweep, sweep_. 

When the shop is cleaned for the morning, your duties whittle down to just listening to old ladies with stuffed-looking toy dogs in their bags tell you stories and offer you the mints in their coin purse. If you’re lucky, Maz does actually make a bouquet or an arrangement, or needs you to check the stock or run errands for supplies, and sometimes you go fetch lunch for the two of you during really slow periods.

It’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s terribly _mundane_. 

And then, one day, it got a little less mundane. 

From being the observer, to being the observed, when you peered out the window on a chilly, Tuesday morning and found yourself locked in the gaze of someone you’d never seen before. 

Niima was a small town, after all, and you knew everyone there, and yet this man leaning toward the window, hands cupped on either side of his face in spite of both being encumbered by a coffee in one and a phone in the other, was entirely unrecognizable. Tousled black hair, strong and prominent features, tall and broad bodied. All dressed in black, pressed slacks and oxford. Gorgeous. Sleek. Cool. 

Your pulse feels electric, you almost drop the feather duster you were using to agitate the succulents lining the windowsill. 

You are suddenly, painfully aware of space. How you two are probably less than four feet apart, separated only by the glass, and you can _see_ the  _ freckles  _ on his face from how close you are. His eyes are dark, staring a hole into you as he tries to squint inside. He probably can’t _actually_ see you, but you can see him so **perfectly** well that your heart is hammering. Your lips fall open, parting around a gasp, around the words you want to say but can’t find the voice for. He wouldn’t even hear you if you did speak, but you want to say  _ something.  _ Ask his name, maybe? Ask if he needs anything.  _ Ask... _

The phone lights up in his hand, the screen is turned away enough that you can’t see what kind of notification, but you assume it was a call because he takes a step back and swipes his thumb across the screen. “ _ Hello?”  _ You see him mouth, beautiful full lips making perfect shapes around the word, and you wonder what his voice sounds like. Is it deep? Coarse? Does it rumble in his chest before he speaks? 

He’s still looking at you without seeing you and you feel paralyzed under his dark eyes. You’re waiting,  _ hoping even,  _ for him to do something. Come inside or go...

He finally turns away, breaks the spell. You drop the duster after all. Your hands fly to your cheeks and they are feverish under your palms. 

As he walks away, your eyes snap to the familiar little silhouette of Maz in the window's reflective surface, “ah, there you are, Child. You left your books on my table, again, I put them in your locker.”

You nod, not listening.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s not that you would say you’re obsessed with your new window-shopper friend, but... you’re totally obsessed with your new window-shopper friend.

In a month, he’s been by the shop every weekday at exactly between 11am-12pm to peer inside and then get inexplicably distracted by something. By that time of the day, usually the coffee shop across the street has set out its tables and chairs, so sometimes he’ll wander over and sit down to talk on the phone, to read, to browse through his laptop, or do whatever insanely handsome guys do on lunch break.

It is a special kind of torture, you think, watching this gorgeous stranger just beyond the glass and being able to do nothing about it.

After a month, you’d resolved that if you ever got the chance, you at least wanted to give him your number. If only you could go outside and hand it to him. One day, when you were feeling really bold during the second week of this, you had fed out some the receipt paper and hastily scrawled your number onto it, only to have Maz come out from the back with a task. Defeated and a little  embarrassed , you balled up and shoved it into your pocket, forgetting about it until you returned home and did laundry the following weekend.

It was becoming agony. 

You truly understood why poets constantly were complaining. Unrequited feelings, unreciprocated attraction—not even existing to the object of your desire. It was rough.

Strangely, your grades saw improvement in the midst of this budding infatuation. Probably because you needed something to focus your attention in. Probably because you could finally empathize with Plato’s hatred of human emotion as it was killing you to have such strong feelings and no outlet for them.

To watch him rake his long fingers through raven-colored tresses, or the way his blunt white teeth dug into surprisingly plush pink lips. You were even beginning to  _ look _ at him the way poets did, describing him with purple prose and adjectives that would make even the most lovelorn writers irritated.

But you couldn’t help it. He was like some mysterious black- spectre and you the unlucky victim of his beguiling visage. 

Suffering. Oh, how it was truly suffering...

Half-way through the second month of his visits, you received a wordy email from your professor about him going out of the country on some kind of mission trip or something, and that a substitute was taking his place for a portion of the semester, including midterms. Apparently, the substitute was kind of a hard-ass, so he advised that his students get as much of their work done as possible before the sub __ took over duties. 

Maz was reading over your shoulder when you were looking at the email and you almost had a heart attack when she laid her tiny, weathered hand on your arm and said, “perhaps, you should have the next three days off to work.”

You’d be lying if you didn’t say you were kind of ungrateful for the sudden time-off. Sure, you did need it to finish your assignments, especially if you wanted to avoid the harsh grading-scale of the sub, but that meant no seeing Mr. Handsome for almost a whole week and that tremendously sucked.

Who was this Prof. Ren anyway and why would he be  _ proud _ of being such an asshole to students?


End file.
